HR professionals in local government must recruit more mavericks from
outside the sector into senior management positions to improve services.
This is the opinion of Mike Pitt, president of local authority chief
executive body the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (Solace).
He urged delegates at the conference to employ staff who would keep a chief
executive awake at night with unconventional ideas.
Pitt, chief executive at Kent County Council, believes new ideas are needed
to help modernise services and challenge traditional ways of doing things.
He fears that the sector has become stale because HR recruits staff who fit
into existing skills sets, making it harder to modernise local government.
"Recruit people who make chief executives feel uncomfortable, are
unpredictable and difficult to manage," urged Pitt.
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"We must also give [these people] influential and dangerous posts.
These people are hard to manage, keep chief executives awake at night, but with
them we can transform and re-energise local government."
